More Conservative Boehner Emerging as Speaker

House Speaker John Boehner, who’s spent the past two years trying to work with President Barack Obama, finally appears to understand what he’s up against.

In remarks to the Ripon Society on Tuesday, Boehner—the de facto head of the Republican Party heading into the next two years—claimed Obama’s main goal is to “annihilate” the GOP.

“In our meetings before Christmas, the President was so tired of me talking about when we were going to deal with an entitlement crisis that he looked at me and said: ‘Boehner, we don’t have a spending problem. We have a health care problem,’” he said in remarks before the group. “It gives you some idea of the challenge that we’re facing. For a guy who’s run up the deficit 60 percent—60 percent of the deficit has occurred under his watch—when you see this, and then you hear him say: ‘I am not going to negotiate on the debt limit. I am not going to deal with the debt limit. That’s Congress’s problem!’… Frankly, I think it’s irresponsible.”

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